Boards›Gameplay

Ways of toning down Tristana and Why

Telosa··5 votes·1,816 views

Considering that Riot is starting to look at Tristana and ways to nerf her early game without affecting her late game, I decided to throw my two cents in. The big underlying problem with Tristana was that she was previously held back by AD Casters who scaled far more effectively with the old Bloodthirster and she was repeatedly buffed to be able to compete with them, but then itemization for Marksmen changed. As a result, Tristana has no one in bot lane who can easily bully her, she scales way too easily with too few items and she's far too safe for her level of damage output.

First, let's look at where Tristana does (and SHOULD excel) with her strengths:

  • At level 18, Tristana has the highest permanent auto attack range due to her passive, which increases her range by 153 to 703. Only Jinx with her Rockets (700), Kog'maw with his W (which gives him a range of 710) and Twitch (with his ultimate that gives him a range of 850) can compete with her range. In addition, Tristana has a 90% auto attack steroid, which allows her to out scale almost any every other marksmen in the game.

*Tristana has a huge dash and a point-and-click knock-back on her ultimate, so she's hard to focus and it's very easy for her to peel for herself.

  • Tristana has high-burst on her abilities - she has 900 magic damage from her W, E and R.

Now, let's look at where Tristana could be toned down: *Tristana has too much auto attack range from her passive and she doesn't pay anything for it. She has a relatively high auto attack range at level 1 (550) and she gets a higher auto attack range with each level.

*Tristana's Q has no mana cost, so she doesn't have any serious mana considerations when all-ining her opponent. It made sense to make her Q free when the old Bloodthirster kept Tristana from making a appearance, but that buff is no longer necessary.

*Her W has a reset and a slow. Tristana's W should primarily be a tool for repositioning or for bursting her opponent, but it shouldn't be a forgiving tool for her when misused. In addition, Tristana already has two ways to peel champions off her (her W and her R), and the enemy team will sometimes have to engage on her as many as three times before they can close the gap. I realize that removing the Reset mechanic is a cornerstone of Tristana's AP build , but I don't think RIot should support Tristana's AP build anyway.

Well, with all this in mind, here's my ideas for changing Tristana's kit, which should keep her late game strength intact while making her more abusable during the early game.

First, a change to Tristana's passive. Tristana's base auto attack range is decreased to 500 and her passive formula is increased from 9 × (Tristana's level - 1). to 12 x (Tristana's level -1). Tristana will recover her old-auto attack range at level 5 and she'll go from having a range of 703 to a range of 704 at level 18.

Second, Tristana's Q gets a scaling mana cost of 40/30/20/10/0. It follows the same logic as Lucian's old E - Tristana will still be able to use her Q constantly at level 18 (which keeps her late game intact), but she'll have to be more careful about using her Q during laning phase.

Third, Tristana's W loses the slow and reset mechanic, but she gets her W's cooldown reduced (to something like 18 / 16 / 14 / 12 / 10). The removal of the slow is mostly just for toning down her CC and removing some of her all-in potential at early levels (Since it's only there for making it more difficult for Tristana's opponent to respond when she all-ins the enemy ADC), and the reset mechanic is removed so that Tristana's opponents can be rewarded when they close the gap. This way, when the enemy team finally closes the gap on Tristana, she can't repeatedly kite and kill each of her opponents and dash away with W each time.

So, I realize these changes aren't perfect, but this is just how I envision a way to tone down Tristana's essential strengths while retaining the strength of her late game. But enough about me - how do you all envision a way to tone down Tristana's early game while retaining her late game power?

15 Comments

RainbowBlitz981 votes

Dont forget that none on her abilities scale with AD so it's kinda balanced. But i agree with removing the slow on her W, and i think her Q should have a small-medium mana cost. Also the passive nerf is a good idea i thought about too. Tristana

MrBuffington1 votes

I posted about potential Tristana range changes earlier, I actually had the same numbers as you.

I like the Q mana cost, though most builds she'll have this at lvl 14, not 18 (she maxes Q second).

The changes to W don't really affect her early game, so I don't think they're necessary.

Her E is actually one of the only ways she can trade early. I think they're working on ways to remove grievous wounds from the game entirely, so this could get some attention too.

ProfDrDeath1 votes

The range changes are interesting.

Still, by the point where Tristana reaches level 14, laning phase should be mostly over. I'd even go so far as to say that the Q mana cost could be even higher - like 60/45/30/15/0 or 80/60/40/20/0.

MrBuffington1 votes

The problem (and therefore goal with proposed changes) I think with Tristana is that her early (and mid) game isn't as weak as it used to be; with the numbers OP and I have, she gains 548 range at lvl 5, which puts her at about normal range. I don't know how it works in actual practice, but Lucian and Kog'Maw have 500 range, and they seem to do okay in lane because they have spells that give them longer range. Hopefully the changes will make it so Tristana drops some CS early, so it'll just delay her build, making her mid game weaker as a result. DoubleLift would say that if Tristana gets out of lane only 30 CS behind, she's in good shape, so I think the goal is to more or less bring her close to that again; kind of like Vayne, she's supposed to lose lane kind of bad.

The correction about the level was more of a minor thing; her laning is still weaker with the Q changes, I was just pointing out that most Tristana builds have her max Q second.

Current changes on PBE just have her ult cooldown raised (which I don't think really affects her too much, and don't really affect her early game either, since it's not even relevant until lvl 6) and the price of IE increased (which isn't a problem imo, it's only another 150 gold on the most expensive item in the game anyways; I'll probably still rush stattik shiv to waveclear faster/clear jungle camps, rinse and repeat just to get enough gold).

FantasySniper1 votes

This is pretty much perfect.

Her [Q] really needs a mana cost, it's just free harass with no risk, like old Soraka's.

Catfish0171 votes

I think her Q basically just needs to be changed into something different. It can still be powerful, but its current state is such a boring, stale, OLD ability.

Telosa1 votes

I don't disagree that Tristana has a boring kit, but that's not really the point of my concerns. There are plenty of champions that I feel are boring or need changes, but the key problem is when their kits become UNHEALTHY. Tristana's Q is unhealthy because it's a absurd instant and FREE steroid (up to 90%, which is a Runaan's Hurricane worth of attack speed) and she also has the highest permanent auto attack range which means that she has the best kit with which to capitalize on that bonus attack speed. More importantly, there's nothing her opponent can do to out-trade her in laning phase when Tristana uses her Q other than bait it out and try to trade her before it comes up again. If Tristana is going to keep her Q, then she either needs a scaling mana cost (so that there is actual cost for Tristana to use it during laning phase), or she needs her Q to have a long cooldown that she can somehow reduce by interacting with her opponents (like having a long cooldown of something like 30 seconds that she can reduce by 1 second each time she auto-attacks).

Catfish0171 votes

Sorry, that was a shorter response of mine than usual. Yes, I meant to imply that her Q was unhealthy due to its age, basically. I don't support adding mana costs to her Q, I support getting rid of the skill completely. It offers no healthy gameplay whatsoever. It doesn't need to be in the game. She should have it replaced by a different skill that allows her to keep her hyper carry status, but requires some sort of interaction.

Stick In Mudd1 votes

Nah, I either take Draven or Ashe against her in lane.

Draven out trades Trist at EVERY stage in the game. No contest whatsoever. It's rather hilarious how it would take Trist about four shots to kill Draven, but only takes him three to kill Trist. Maybe two if there's lucky criticals.

Ashe is great because Trist's jump has a delay to it, therefore Trist cannot dodge the Arrow without burning flash. So Trist gets locked down pretty hard, just long enough to either knock her out of the fight, or kill her.

Also, Ashe and Trist (for me) are built exactly the same. IE, then Shiv as the core items. Ashe also outranges Trist so early laning bullying, isn't a problem. And besides, most bullying comes from the supports nowadays. Unless you pick Draven, that is.

Trist could be toned down a bit with her numbers; but the core of her play style will remain the same. Resets on jump to dominate a team fight. Trist is really beautiful with this. I have carried many games because of this, without the slow being a factor at all. As for her auto attack range, this will simple destroy her early laning against certain champs. She'll get bullied too much by Lucian forcing her to back too many times, Draven will simply destroy her if she so much as looks at a minion, and Ashe will be the zoning queen.

The reason the AA range nerf worked for Lucian, was because of his quick, instant response dash. Trist does not have this. There is a delay to it, and the animation of the jump is (relatively) slow.

Telosa2 votes

Um, okay, first? I don't think Draven is actually a example of a balanced ADC and as a Ashe main, Ashe should usually lose that lane. Draven out-trades almost EVERY ADC other than Vayne in short windows, and his AD scaling is outright absurd. By comparison, Ashe has great harassment potential pre-level 6, but she still loses all-ins and Tristana has almost definite kill-potential at level 6. Honestly, Ashe feels like she SHOULD win that lane, but she's entirely dependent on a good jungle gank or a solid support to win that lane.

Second, even if Ashe and Tristana build in the exact same way, Tristana scales WAY harder with that same build: she has a 30-90% attack speed steroid, the ability to apply Grievious Wounds (which means Tristana will out-sustain almost every other ADC in most trades) and 400-900 base damages in her basic combo. In addition, Tristana has NO skill shots in her kit, so she never has to worry about missing one of her abilities. By contrast, Ashe is dependent on landing two skillshots to deal her damage, her base damages are the lowest of any ADC and she has no steroids. Ashe is the Queen of UTILITY and brief trades, and she'll lose almost every fight unless she lands her ultimate on someone or gets proper peel.

Third, the AA nerf wouldn't be as painful as you claim for Tristana. Unlike other marksmen, Tristana is the ONLY ADC WHO GAINS AUTO ATTACK RANGE WITH LEVELS. The auto attack range nerf would impact her early-mid damage potential (where Tristana is meant to be weaker and easy to abuse), but it would also keep her late game strength intact where Tristana is meant to shine.

Stick In Mudd1 votes

I think Draven is perfectly balanced, as far as bot lane goes.

Bot lane is (typically) a DUO lane. That is very important when discussing balancing with ADCs. But for the sake of brevity, we will just assume the supports are 'equally' matched.

You said, "Ashe feels like she SHOULD win that lane, but she's entirely dependent on a good jungle gank or a solid support to win that lane"

This can be argued for any ADC.

The laning phase typically lasts until around lvl 7 or 8. Maybe 9 or 10 if it's an extremely close skill lvl matchup on all lanes.

This means that Ashe outranges Trist during the entire laning phase. This isn't a small thing either; especially when lvl 6 arrives. You say "dependent on a good jungle gank"; well guess what? The arrow sets up a good jungle gank. Even with the most incompetent jungler, they should still be able to manage to hit their skill shots on an immobile, stunned target. And Trist's jump has a delay on it, making it useless to use as a way to dodge the arrow. Flash will have to be burned, if it wasn't burned already.

Also, you mention sustain during trades. Well, this is the laning phase, there's really not much sustain going on with early items nowadays; so that's a moot point. And Trist will most likely go IE and then Shiv, therefore she won't have any sustain either. And one should bring Sheild as a summoners against trist anyway.

During trading, and bullying. Ashe outranges Trist, and applies a slow to her autos. Trist will have to make the decision to either walk forward a bit and attack, or back off. Either way, once Trist backs off, the slow is there, and Ashe can get another auto in, thus winning the trade. All trist does to Ashe in trading is hitting the E button, and maybe getting an AA in, and then walking away, or having to jump away, if the Ashe applies the slow and follows for a little bit.

When it does come to late game, where Trist can out trade Ashe in pretty much every way, Ashe still has the arrow. Trist has to typically wait for an engage, while Ashe can set up an engage.

Anyway, this is all theory crafting. It's just from my experiences of playing as Ashe against Trist, and also from playing Trist a lot (my main climbing champ).

As you've said, Ashe is pretty weak ATM. She feels to me as if just below being a quality pick. Maybe they can rework her passive into something actually useful, like it granting more damage to the next critical strike over time.

As far as nerfing the range on Trist; I am against bringing her range below 550, which is standard for ADCs in this game. Riot can go ahead and nerf her late game range, that's fine. In fact, it would be fine with me if she just gets a set range of 600, the whole game; like Ashe. What makes Trist, trist for me, is her jump reset, and AS steroid (but that can be altered a bit too).

How about this, I just thought of it. How about they switch around her AS steroid and her passive? What if they make her like Kog, and make it an ability to get range, but her AS increases per lvl? She would be able to get full range at lvl 9, like Kog, but not get AS steroid till late game.

Actually, now that I read that, it's a terrible idea. Nevermind.

Cloud Potato1 votes

Trist is a problem when strong because she has almost no counterplay. All of her damage is targeted except for W, which is only used offensively when you're so far ahead there's no risk to it, or it will secure a kill and you can jump back out. When there's nobody that flat out beats her face in she will always be there because you cannot play against anything she has other than to stay out of range. Q mana costs will not fix this whatsoever. Removing W's slow and resets makes it much less of a snowball mechanic, so I don't disagree with that change. But she also needs a change that will let her actually interact with her opponent instead of having a 'I will hurt you' zone.

The facts that Trist's abilities don't scale and deal magic damage, and that every ADC has basic attacks anyway, does not mean that it's okay to lack counterplay (AP Trist is a good example why). This is the same issue many Bruisers have, where they win or lose depending on who has the higher numbers. Being ranged only slightly helps this problem, since she can be numerically weak and get by thanks to her safety, but if she's going to be a healthy champion she needs something in her kit that can be played against.

Telosa2 votes

Honestly, I can't really argue with you there. Honestly, I have three majors problems with Tristana's kit - it's too safe, it's too consistent and her damage window is too narrow for her opponent to usually exploit. For example, the only 'skill shot' in Tristana's kit is her W, and her only real concern for her other abilities are 'are my opponent in range or not'. You cannot dodge Tristana's R, you cannot avoid the Damage over Time from her E and you usually can't out-trade Tristana because she has a point-and-click to apply Grievous wounds on her E. More importantly, despite Tristana having absurdly long auto attack range at high levels, she also has absurd mobility, so it's incredibly difficult to punish Tristana when she makes a misplay.

And even if you put aside how you dislike how Tristana plays as a AD Carry, you also have to contend with her AP build as well. Tristana's has 3 AP ratios, and two of them are point-and-click (and the third is her Dash which is next to impossible to dodge unless you have flash or a dash built into your kit). In a proper AP Tristana combo, Tristana has only 1 second of warning (where she begins her dash) and then she fires all of her abilites at once and instagibbing her opponent. AP Tristana is only held back by three things - she has to all-in you to kill you, her ult's cooldown, and her base damages are slightly low for a AP assassin. her ratios are absurd and it's impossible for her to miss with anything but her W.

When the odds are stacked SO HEAVILY in Tristana's favor, it feels like you don't win lane against Tristana - you just wait for her to (hopefully) make a misplay to win the lane instead. For most ADCs, there's a clear window that you can abuse: Ashe has relatively low damage and a bad laning phase,Draven has single-target damage but is easily punished when he catches axes, Varus has great poke but is easily caught out of position, Twitch and Vayne have great single-target damage but terrible wave clear and very-litte/no AOE damage, and so on. If you know the enemy ADC and the weakness of their kits in advance, then you usually know in advance where and when you can abuse the enemy ADC. By contrast, Tristana is essentially a AP Assassin during laning phase who either snowballs in laning phase by all-ining you, or she just waits until she hits 2 items, becomes one of the strongest AD carries in the game and she vastly outscales you.

In a ideal world, here's the changes I would make to Tristana:

  1. Reduce her auto attack range (as I outlined in the original post) and increase her auto attack range scaling to compensate. For her sheer range in laning phase, Tristana should have a BELOW AVERAGE auto attack range during laning phase so that most marksmen have a clear window where they can out-trade her.

  2. Increase her mana costs or decrease her mana pool. Alternatively, a more elegant solution is to give Tristana's Q a scaling mana cost, so that she can't use it with impunity during laning phase. For her sheer mobility and damage, I never really feel like Tristana has to worry about her mana costs. Higher mana costs would only affect her in laning phase and would gimp some of her early game all-in potential.

  3. Remove her reset mechanic on her W (which is just to escalate her clean up potential and her safety) and remove the slow (Which is just there to prevent Tristana's target from escaping when she all-ins someone). Decrease the cooldown on Tristana's W to compensate.

  4. Turn Tristana's E from a targeted Damage over Time ability (which makes her opponent underestimate the sheer damage her E does over the course of a trade) into a burst damage skill shot with higher base damage. The Skill shot will only be relevant when Tristana tries to fire from a distance, but will be irrelevant when fired from point-blank range. Remove the ability for Tristana to apply Grievious Wounds with her E, but give it a AD ratio.

  5. Reduce Tristana's base health and armor (which is a key consideration for early all-ins) and increase her health and armor per-level to compensate.

ValyrianBlade1 votes

I've always taken caitlyn against tristana and in about 20 Games am yet to lose the match up (or the game). a part of it is probably that caitlyn and tristana are my 2 adc mains so I probably out-skill my opponent in these games, but I think it's a favorable match up to caitlyn anyways. tristana has to push the lane due to her e passive while caitlyn can poke and harass to her heart's content with no trade back pre level 6 for sure and often through level 10. Since tristana pushes passively you can easily get a gank kill after your first back, and since she has nothing but her w to poke back against caitlyn's q, if tristana wastes w aggressively she's going to get killed. without thresh as her support to pull her out, I feel like tristana is just destroyed early game in this match up. Yes she scales way harder but when caitlyn has 2-4 levels on her, 2 extra turrets, and roams to secure kills mid on top of dragons, the game has snowballed way too far that even the mighty late game tristana has no say in the matter. Not to mention there are a few assassins, most notably talon, that can kill tristana pretty easily (talon e silences her and he can get in range via his ult stealth, one combo kill before the silence finishes).

Stick In Mudd1 votes

Yes, I agree. I play Tristana as one of my main climbing champs. And every time the enemy picks her, I get excited and pick Draven.

It's hilarious how the Trist cowers under tower for almost the entirety of the laning phase. And then it comes to mid/late game, and tries to duel, only to be 3 shotted (and maybe ulted, depends). I have my ALL chat disabled, but I'm pretty sure their not too happy about it. Probably sound like the OP that Draven isn't a balanced ADC; lol!

I haven't really tried Caitlyn against Trist, but I don't really like Cait; she's lack luster imo. I like flashy champions, hehe, with hard engages, redonkulous damage, and/or jumping all over the place mowing down the enemy team. Trist has 2 out of 3 of those, so I can see people being mad about it.

But those enemy Trists, they're just so bad at her. Most people think they can just play what many think is an op champ and win, but then realize that it still takes skill and knowledge to win.

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